foreign not only is that one of my favorite Weezer
songs I think it perfectly sets the tone for what to expect going into this special episode
of the death of a game series a series where we choose games or companies and diagnose the
largest contributing reasons to the failures or the deaths of them halo is my favorite shooter
franchise it's not debatable for me Halo taught me about fast-paced arena-like movement competitive
Shooters voice communication custom lobbies mods and glitches and
so much more it is a part of my
origin story as a gamer and I have significantly played every single Halo including Halo Wars
a spin-off RTS title in the Halo Universe Halo infinite was the newest addition in the
franchise set to be the game's major return to the PC platform and have its 10-year long Reign
from that point on Halo infinite the first free to play open world Halo game would launch in
December of 2021 and Garner quite the popularity straight out of the gates topping the steam
charts a platform that had had some levels up success previously with the Halo MCC but was
largely unknown on what proceeded to happen after was arguably one of the biggest fumbles
in video game in history Halo infinite went from everyone's favorite new game to abandoned in the
span of a year and there are so many factors that led to that point including pre-launch during
development post-launch and even still now and more recently with the entire Halo franchise in
turmoil and Halo infinite
seemingly unable to reclaim any of its initial Glory it felt like the
perfect time to cover Halo infinite on the series normally I ask the detectives watching to use
their intuition and look for Clues and evidence to connect the story of whatever case we're
covering in this case Halo infinite but this story in particular has so many Clues and pieces
of evidence it feels less like a mystery murder and more like a convoluted accident laid bare for
everyone to see my hope is I can organize it
all for you guys in a way that makes sense including
a breakdown of all of 343's involvement in the Halo franchise which I find to be very important
in telling the story this is a special episode personally but also because of what it contains
this isn't just the death of Halo infinite we are covering detectives we are covering a potential
death of a franchise at the hands of 343 the story of Halo infinite has to be started with
the holders of the franchise itself following the exit and de
parture of Bungie from Microsoft and
the Halo franchise 343 Studios would be founded back in 2007. with the goal of being the new
caretakers of the Halo franchise the interesting part about the entire equation is that besides
Microsoft handing off for the time the biggest shooter franchise to an unheralded development
Studio primarily known for the Halo Waypoint and animated series was that free for three Studios
didn't even have many original Halo developers this is super interesting becau
se most of the time
that mergers happen or exits happen a good portion of the original Talent will stay behind but the
majority of the talent at Bungie left and went on to create the destiny franchise later on to great
success in fact there are multiple pieces of media that state not only did 343 Studios have non-halo
developers some of the higher profile ones didn't even necessarily like the franchise which was
absolutely bizarre whenever it came out years ago and is still bizarre in the c
ontext of the
story The Transition was all but positive too according to reports especially when the only OG
developer was indeed Frank O'Connor enter Frank O'Connor into the story oh yeah this episode
will have a breakdown of every major character involved in the story and their contributions or
lack of this is naturally based on what I know in reports that I have for my contacts I believe
it's important to hold developers accountable especially in leadership positions Frank O'Connor
was
the Lone bungee Dev who stayed at 343 Studios but interestingly enough he wasn't actually a
developer at least not in the pure sense he was a writer for a community section of their forum
and no I'm not gatekeeping I'm making people understand that he had no actual game development
experience which is problematic in Silicon Valley and I have encountered this myself personally and
the whole West Coast game development situation I find it most interesting because in 2009 when 343
Studios bega
n development on Halo 4 the next major Halo project without Bungie for the first time
they put Frank in a director position which is quite the promotion now Halo 4 has tons of videos
that talk about its development hell and problems like how they had this initial build that the
team including the game's lead director Josh Holmes would turn down in favor of a different
and more unique approach you see this fits with the theme of 343 Studios and their new vision
of Halo because they had a new
vision while they managed on their first attempt to make a Halo game
feel Halo despite not having many Halo developers but they had the help of creative assembly but
perhaps since the majority of the developers were not originally Halo developers or Halo fans their
second attempt at Halo 4 is what ended up bringing in the most hated changes and features that that
people ended up disliking to put a bow on the Halo 4 story and why it's incredibly relevant for this
one Halo infinance is becau
se it's at the tone for what was expected going forward for 343 and
what kind of products they would create you see according to fans in the media people disliked
Halo 4. and specifically they disliked many of the new changes the visual style and the overall
direction of the story which committed to minifan and some really huge errors with 343 employees and
leaders like Josh Holmes and Frank O'Connor still to this day maintain Halo 4 was a success just
because it sold a lot despite having t
he biggest drop off in Halo population history this gives you
an idea of what kind of company and developers and Leadership positions you are dealing with where
they still don't want to accept that their first attempt was a failure in the Halo franchise and
they wanted to be seen as a success regardless now before we get too deep into the timeline and
story I talked about being a mega halo fan in an introduction but I wanted to elaborate further
it both hopefully provides me some credibilit
y in your eyes but also validates my life and
experiences as Halo was and is very dear to me Halo was the first time I ever played against
other players online competitively and it set the tone for my expectations and Desires in that realm
thereafter I was playing Halo 1 at a single digit age and even played the PC version including the
mods when I turned double digits I even remember in computer science in high school convincing my
computer science teacher that it was part of my project pa
yload 2 would change everything though
unlike Halo 1 you didn't just need to join custom lobbies anymore there was actual matchmaking and
I could play against players from all over the world Halo 2 taught me how to improve at a video
game had a glitch and mod my Xbox which I did by giving it some cool red rings and furthered my
love for game development while I never achieved a high rank in Halo 2 due to to lack of being
able to even access Xbox live in the first place I was a very prolific
modern glitcher who was quite
skilled due to my ability to be XR or double shot essentially if you think about in the fgc
community or fighting game terms I was a lab kid I just sat offline and practiced glitches
until I went online and realized that bxr was op which was very funny and a fun thing to
experience next is Halo 3 and this is when I really tried to play ranked competitively
I found my true love for custom logs and Halo even though it was kind of always budding since
the beginn
ing but Halo 3 was just a streamlined experience it's the best way to put it and it
had something to offer for everyone I remember having tons of friends of all kinds and skill
levels to play with and join in on I was able to reach rank 45 playing as a solo player as
my friends weren't good enough to get really past like Rank 30. and it was a huge Personal
Achievement for me since it was the first time I set up my own competitive goal despite growing
up doing martial arts tournaments and co
mpeting there after Halo 4 came out I was all over the
game trying to be a professional player training as much as I could pre-launch and then at
launch and on Halo 4 though like for many other players for me just didn't feel like Halo
and left a hollow experience for me which made me wait only months into the game for the first
time of a Halo title ever now to put that into perspective I didn't like reach as much as the
others especially with the abilities in bloom but I liked it way more
than Halo 4. and played
it for years as the timeline now progresses onward I will give some of my personal thoughts
concerning each Halo and my involvement with them 343 would continue on trucking with their second
Halo title Halo 5 releasing in the fall of 2015. Halo 5 would prove to be an interesting story
because although there were many complaints about the game's storyline from players it wasn't nearly
as bad or hated as the previous Halo that being said it still wasn't very good becau
se it didn't
feel like the story of Halo necessarily I mean 343 even admitted that they should have featured the
franchise's protagonist Master Chief more and that they made some mistakes in Halo 5's narrative on
top of that although it had a shaky launch due to the expectations of this once people got more time
to explore and play the multiplayer experiences the Halo Community would actually end up becoming
kind of divided on the game Halo 5 would introduce more movement options than ever
before in a Halo
game including aerial-based movement this would raise the skill level incredibly of Halo 5 but
would alienate many casual players this is why the community is ultimately divided on Halo 5
because if you like competitive Halo there's a good chance that you liked Halo 5 and if you were
a part of the massive majority casual audience for Halo sorry I know that stings but it's just
true you were sort of given the subpar product now I will go against the grain and say that I
act
ually enjoyed War Zone in Halo 5 Guardians this was a 12 vs 12 game mode that featured
vehicles and unlockables the problem is it was kind of hard to enjoy with it being drenched in
the stench of over monetization I mean check out this video that they tried to scrub from the
internet that somebody sent me to sum up how suddenly Master Chief and the Halo franchise in
Halo 5's era was seemingly pimped out like a cheap salesman think of wreck packs like a collection of
virtual trading cards ea
ch pack contains cards or items like assassination animations stances
weapons armor visors helmets and vehicles I thought this was relevant to the show because it
set the tone for what was to come next with Halo infinite and to be honest it shouldn't have
led to as much surprise for those that were familiar with it Halo 5 would sell a little
more than Halo 4 but less than Halo Reach but these were still quite respectable numbers Halo 5
overall I think I will remember positively though flawe
d Halo 5 feels like 343 Studios really
tried to commit to making their own halo this time which was commendable in many ways and it
actually came out pretty cool I just think that it felt like to me Halo 5 was trying a little
too hard to be an arena shooter which is why when games like split gate came out later on it
kind of felt like a better version of it foreign the creative director and head of Halo 4 Josh
Holmes would leave the company December 2016 a year after the launch of Halo 5. J
osh would go on
to co-found the company midwinter entertainment which would publish many different video games
with some levels of success but fail their only in-house developed title that I covered on the
series already scavengers the next month 343 would lose one of their major producers Dana yoube
I want to try to talk about the impact of each departure as much as possible obviously and where
they go but sometimes some are going to be harder than most damn seems just like a producer he m
ight
be a great one but he doesn't have a large public presence and he doesn't get talked about much from
any of my information or from any of my contacts he would go on to be a big time suit at Wizards
of the Coast so it's hard to imagine it was a negative move for him despite long history that
he had at Microsoft outside of 343 Studios with a few of the larger 343 Debs departing there was
still enough of the original core Squad around 343 would continue to do what they do which was create
Halo games and announce their newest addition in the Halo Universe and the subject for this video
Halo infinite would be announced at E3 in 2018 but things were different this time 343 Studios
didn't just lose some of their major Talent they were losing developers in general whether from
downsizing or contracts expiring or what ever 2018 would signify the time that 343 Studios
would transition largely to contract workers restricted to 18-month Cycles this would prove
to be a crucial error
in many ways going forward besides just lack of quality and quality control
it created an issue of a lack of a unified Vision in a team that seemed confused on what it wanted
to accomplish professionals generally can push past these issues but it has to come from the top
down and 343 Studios even early on had some cracks forming in their leadership that likely could
have resulted in problems like this one according to estimates contract workers made up over half
of 343 Studios and Halo inf
inence team original developers in general actual salary non-contract
developers would continue to shrink as well I think there should be something to be said about
the fact that this could be related to 343 Studios paying below the standard in Washington which
has a High Cost of Living so then therefore their competition on the lower part of the West Coast
in California can end up stealing their talent and a puff piece 343 Studios head Bonnie Ross
would come out in January of 2019 talking
about the difficulties of transitioning Halo's rights
from Bungie the weird thing is is that she doesn't actually talk about the difficulties necessarily
in any meaningful detail and the admitting the mistakes part that the article talks about is
literally an offhand comment that Bonnie doesn't further expound on the article even states that
at the very beginning in the same interview Bonnie Ross would actually detail more of the behind the
scenes issues concerning Halo and its transition f
rom Bungie which was concerning the game's engine
the previous engine blam not only had the majority of his engineers and original designers leave the
company three for three Studios wasn't choosing to work with people who were for whatever reasons
familiar with it now I can speculate as to why but I was told by a contact who worked on the
project that there was a lot of technical debt in the blam engine and if you weren't familiar
with it it was difficult blam would shift to the Subspace e
ngine a move that Bonnie stated was
long overdue but was their answer to the Studio's complaints about the engine in its limitations
speaking of which the limitations of the engine were concerning the single versus multi-threading
aspects and the ability to stream multi-leveled environments or difficulty doing such Bungie
would go on to adapt their blam engine to the tiger engine and address many of these issues
in their own unique IP title post Halo Destiny 343 Studios on the other hand wo
uld struggle to
continue to adapt their engine behind closed doors while in public essentially took a Victory lap
while being behind the curve according to Bonnie Ross the large reason for their shift to their
own engine which took a lot of resources and dedication from the team during development was
because the Halo engine was incredibly engineer focused she specifically even states that
it was hard for creatives to work in it now I can't exactly pinpoint what this means because
if it wa
s difficult for designers and people with engine experience then that was problematic
but what if it was them just not wanting to work with people who were in The know of it and
them kind of wanting to control the information this happens a lot in corporations and companies
could have also been them wanting to use an engine adds more visual scripting bass so people with
little technical experience can actually get involved neither of these are particularly
egregious reasons but decisions do
have consequences and choosing to double down on the
engine and craft their own and there on was risky if things didn't work out well because although
everyone always talks about when that goes right if it goes wrong you just spent years on an engine
that you are going to have to later abandon anyway but Halo infinite was supposed to be the next
future Halo spanning well past and normal Halo cycle 343 Studios had Ambitions of the game
lasting 10 years they would have a reveal for Halo infi
nite E3 2020 and in that reveal the apparent
new and shiny Subspace was shruggling the footage shown at E3 not only had poor art model quality
their poor animations and a lack of sound Fidelity throughout it was a very poor showing and arguably
the poorest public hype showing of Halo in history 343 Studios promise changes in advancements would
be fast coming but fans were worried when the game had reportedly been cooking for years already and
it was only one year before the supposed launch
former Halo 2 and Halo 3 Rider and Microsoft
executive Joseph staden would re-enter the pitcher as the campaign lead with promises to fix what
issues were showcased at E3 that year sometime after that Joseph would then be transitioned to
the creative head which I don't know exactly what that constitutes but it seems like 343 Studios
operated with two kinds of suits the general 343 Studio staff which were not very numerous and then
the majority of the contract workers within the 343 Studio s
taff the two differences in employees
were likely very obvious and prominent as I had been told this in other cases by prior employees
from Microsoft that you have a color badge if you are a long-term employee and it's really hard
to fire in Microsoft badged employee you have another color badge if you're a temp worker and
from a temp worker perspective in my sources from a temp worker it very much feels like you are a
temp worker these are kinds of employee there's two kinds of suits thoug
h they're similar to
this but it's more so based on their level of seniority within Microsoft itself which is a large
part of the problem really some suits were nearly Untouchable because they had roots and ties to
Microsoft no matter what what happened they would always have a company and a place to shift to the
others had power but Halo in 343 Studios was sort of all they had which likely created some power
vacuum situations in the company between all of these power structures and a super
vertical power
structure probably didn't help matters either Chris Lee a former producer and creative
director on Halo and dub the savior of Halo MCC would depart 343 Studios October 2020. this
was arguably the biggest blow to Halo infinite's development yet and the overall company of 343
Studios for my sources Chris really was what he was hyped up to be a fantastic leader who knew how
to organize his people his Direction directly led to the success on the Halo MCC project which was
a Hal
o project that featured Halo 1 through Halo 4 with the first two of them having remasters
Halo MCC would launch with tons of issues in a number of ways 343 Studios would then just
seemingly abandon it until Chris Lee and his team would begin working on Halo MCC which would
result in it having a storybook comeback in total across both of my accounts I have over 500 hours
in Halo MCC and I had an absolute blast doing it Halo MCC not only has a custom browser and
mods now it has matchmaking fo
r it as well the ability to play all of the Halos at your
fingertips is just crazy too Halo MCC is still suffering from success even today in a modern
time three years later after Chrisley departs 343 Studios so Chris Lee's departure would most
definitely affect Halo infinite's development going forward changing as much as one of my
sources reports the very direction of the game and I'm now removed a blog post 343 Studios would
talk about their design philosophy regarding progression Decemb
er 2020th we want everyone to
play the game in a healthy manner that they enjoy we're not trying to build a grind machine that
burns everyone out in an attempt to get more game time from them halo infinite needs to be a place
where we all look forward to spending time while they didn't exactly state that they wanted
to revert back to the fan favorite original career rank system of Halo 2 and Halo 3. they did
literally state that they didn't want to create a grind machine which some players
took as them
not doing a battle pass or content close to that since it usually requires grinding Vapor 3 Studios
is stance though on Career rank is as bizarre as Activision Blizzard stance on Prestige ranks in
Call of Duty and both of these have been bizarre since the very beginning fans never supported the
removal of them and have constantly pushed back on every game that doesn't have them so why don't
they have them why doesn't 343 Studios put career rank in their games I don't really kno
w besides
controlling lovers for monetization to be blunt the next month 343 Studios was promising monthly
updates in order to accomplish their takeover with Halo infinite the significance of the title
besides the high amounts of hype behind it and resources were concerning Halo as a franchise
reaching a PC audience and more Halo hadn't been on PC since the Halo 2 Vista version and there was
a massive audience there for them to leverage but they had to impress them and keep them impressed
as PC fans were used to such the bigger kicker would be that Halo infinite would be both a paid
and a free-to-play game this would be the first time a major Halo game had been free and could
serve as an opportunity to dominate that market with a well-known pre-existing IP and fan base
there's always a catch though only the multiplayer would be free to play while the campaign would
remain a buy-to-play affair this would ensure an enabled 343 Studios to make profit off of an
online progressio
n system and skins and Halo infinite these are very two significant issues
in the story of Halo infinite going forward too for fans concerned about the skins and progression
system for your armor and customization being paid to win 343 Studios would assure fans at
E3 of 2021 that there would be millions of customization options available in Halo
infinite Halo 3 and reach had a very expansive customization system everything from emblems to
armor stylings and effects and more the sheer amount
of customizable pieces of armor you could
unlock was incredible and it made people excited to choose their favorite sets and then attempt
to acquire them that's why there's such a high standard with customization for Halo a game that
most people wouldn't really think is particularly customizable but it is kind of more than the
Cod franchise part of what makes Halo so cool is customizing and playing as your Spartan after all
coming in as another absolute dagger to the story of Halo infinite
before the game even launched and
it's already complicated in tumultuous development cycle would be news that 343 Studios would not
be including a co-op and a forge mode at launch unfortunately as we focus the team for shutdown
and really focused on a quality experience for launch we made the really tough decision to
delay shipping campaign co-op for launch and we also made the tough call to delay shipping
Forge past launch as well this was devastating news as Bonnie Ross sat on stage at a
n Xbox show
and promised people that the next Halo was going to have co-op we will always have split screen
in going forward and more so devastating because everyone had the expected these two core features
to greatly bolster the game flawed or not without them replayability would be greatly lowered
and affected for the game which could affect longevity until both of them would be implemented
worse I was told by numerous contacts who were worked at 343 Studios that during this time the
wor
k expectations and crunch was just insane the development team was largely contract workers
painted rates below the industry standard by the way and one of the most expensive regions in
the world simply put employees were burnt out and although infinite had already been delayed a year
before many were wishing and praying for another delay people knew they couldn't keep up with
the demands of Microsoft as the majority of the pressure was being generated by them and their
specific suit employ
ees involved in 350 Studios and I had this confirmed by multiple contacts but
343 studios in its largely contracted Workforce would march on regardless with launch only a few
months away while I feel bad for the rank and file developers according to many sources 343 Studios
knew it wouldn't be able to deliver on both of these for well over months which further pushes
The Narrative that they were outmanned outgunned and desperately in need of more delays speaking
to the issues of leadership
and game Direction speaking of game Direction it was a confusing
thing with Halo infinite and what it was trying to be when it was first announced that it was
the first time that Halo was ever going to be an open world game and the problem is is that
nobody had asked for that so if it worked out it was cool didn't it was kind of a big problem
but Halo was all about levels originally Halo one in my opinion has some of the best crafted levels
I have ever played I can play them over and over a
gain out of order even the game shifting to an
open world would greatly affect the game's flow feel narrative and overall approach of the
player if the open world gamble didn't work out you would have a subpar open world game that
butchers many of the core Essences of a classic Halo game it was a tremendous risk on top of all
of the stuff that I've already mentioned it just seemed too difficult to attain but I think that
343 Studios was committed at this point and they needed to be but when
they were just as early
as two months before launch stating that they didn't like to call Halo infinite an open world
game it's just confusing Direction wise and in worried me and many others for what was to come
while open Beta would happen November 15 2021 many fans like myself who were Halo insiders would have
access to the game in the summer and we were all pretty impressed the atmosphere surrounding the
game as well was just electric it was not only exciting to be playing the newest H
alo title but
being on the cusp of a Halo title taking over the shooter World on PC as a mega halo fan was just
so exciting for me and I began formulating how it would make content in the game even The Insider
tests were largely against bots but that really showcased a combination of modern gameplay and
some classic Halo sensibilities to me the game felt somewhere between Halo Reach and Halo 5
which probably wasn't my favorite mix but it was far better than Halo 4. with the battle
rifle an
d many other classic weapons making a return excitement was high for classic Halo fans
concerning Halo infinite and the potential to be the next Fortnight or modern Call of Duty game
the open Beta was also quite positively received these bite-sized views of Halo infinite show
that there was some quality therein but Halo was a game of an entire multiplayer's life cycle
including matchmaking custom games and more it wasn't just about being exciting in one match
or two you needed a full system
to make it not only easier to play in those matches but also
learn and progress from them only launch could show how Halo infinite would truly perform but
expectations were incredibly High pre-launch Halo infinite would have their cash shop leaked
in November of 2021 and there was a massive fan backlash over such it would take over a thousand
dollars to purchase all of the items located in the store all of which were not obtainable through
progression and just simply playing the game it's
one thing that they were so egregious with it with
no ways to obtain them for free which contradicts their promises pre-launch which probably explains
why they took that blog post down but the skins and items in the shop aren't even very good
if this was the best the artist could cook up well then try to sell the players it wasn't a
very good effort anyway 343 Studios was aware of the backlash but would state that things would
take time to change let me translate corporations have calculati
ons for doing annoying and obnoxious
things it's called risk management they calculate how much risk is in something and if the risk in
the backlash is worth how much money they will make from it in this case 343 Studios was well
aware that they would get backlash already but they were calculating how much of it they would
get and that perhaps over time people would forget it this means that they would leave the shop the
same for quite a while to both see how much money they could make from
it and then use it as a
moment to profess an apology and reduction in the store which was sort of an advertisement in
the first place in reality it's because nobody's buying it is why they would change it to make
matches worse the cash shop wasn't the only problem and like many modern Shooters especially
free to play ones Halo infinite would feature a battle pass this battle pass would allow you to
unlock skins AI types and weapon Styles battle passes exists as a way to entice players to p
lay
frequently over the course of a cycle which is usually a few months in the case of Halo infinite
the battle pass the system was based on challenges these challenges were randomly selected for the
day and would require unique wins in particular game modes using a particular queue which means
that games could lead to leave fests as players would lead games in order to join the right one
for the right challenge it felt very restrictive and not very intuitive resulting in a lot
of frustrat
ion the grind and frustration of challenges just took the fun from Halo for many
players versus enhancing it 343 Studios would state that they heard the community concerns
regarding this and were working on ways to expand multiplayer progression what do you want
you guys promised a million customization options why are you still working on such two months
before launch and we already knew that the community wouldn't have liked a poorly structured
battle pass system poorly looking skins that
are overpriced and a lack of customization options
because well we have precedent other Halo games like even MCC have better skins and customization
options with only two months left before launch the chances of 343 Studios fixing any
of these issues were just slim to none Halo infinite would officially launched December
8th 2021 to a fast level of success straight out of the gate blowing expectations and population
estimates out of the water being the first Halo game to launch on Steam or
iginally would greatly
boost the popularity and visibility of the game too Halo infinite would score from 31 different
critics and 80 out of 100 on aggregate review website Metacritic PC Gamer who gave the game a 78
out of 100 would exclaim that Halo infinite really is good halo for lapse fans of Bungee games like
me Halo infinite is a strong return to form and In the Heat of battle it's the best running and
gunning the series has ever had it's painfully easy to imagine a world where infini
te could
have easily been one of my favorite entries to days but between an open world that feels largely
redundant and a story that can't shed the series's baggage Halo infinite's campaign Falls just shy of
being great Halo starting with the campaign Halo infinite's campaign as aforementioned would
for the first time feature an open world and unfortunately it felt out of place for me and many
other players Halo infinite starts very strong then has some sections that just unfortunately
dra
g on without much difference unique or captivating moments happening Halo infinite goes
from a decent campaign experience to seemingly rushed by the end of it too with a villain who
both fails to capture my attention and never properly shuts up with more story content added
and fixes over time though the campaign in Halo infinite was salvageable but not great it did feel
like a better effort than Halo 5 but unfortunately instead of fixing some of the narrative issues
three for three said th
at they would fix they would end up causing a lot more of them and
Band-Aid fixing some of the story problems that they created previously like how the forerunners
were originally supposed to be an ancient human race who got wiped out according to Bungie or how
they took the story of katana and just changed it and how in Halo infinite for example you basically
get Cortana at home it's not even the real Cortana which just equally feels bizarre now I won't spend
any more time talking about th
e campaign and its reception however because Halo infinite's campaign
wasn't bad enough on its own trying to tank the game or hurt it significantly but I felt like
it also wasn't enough to impress anyone or bring in any new players it felt like despite being
an open world game a safe Halo title Halo has shown though that a poor campaign or not if it's
good enough you can still sell Halo to the masses if the multiplayer could keep them around which
Halo 4 would fail to do despite its impress
ive initial numbers as well 343 Studios didn't want
another repeat of Halo 4. despite many suits at 3 Studios insistence and resistance the game
was a great success the multiplayer and Halo infinite is where I have the most experience I
played the game quite heavily at launch quite easily reaching Onyx in both solo and team based
queues as a Duo Q player however like many other players I encountered many problems in my quest to
Onyx for starters the team matchmaking and balance seemed total
ly out of whack at the time where I
was getting matched with higher ranked players against me simply because of my KDA and my high
win rate second I did placements with my cousin and I outranked him to where we couldn't even play
ranked anymore which was just bizarre I placed diamond and he hit Blan as soon as I hit Onyx I
couldn't play with him anymore which combined with a slew of disconnects and ranked games that
I was getting with no ability to rejoin and then getting penalized for it w
ould cut my ranked
Journey short instead like in mini pass other Halo titles ones bored with competitive weather season
or or not I would move on to my true love of Halo big Team Battle big Team Battle is what makes
Halo Halo for me it's the closest thing to the single player campaign it's just Halo at a larger
grander scale with vehicles and more Mayhem please sign me up again and again it is the perfect
casual playlist to attract players of all skill types and was a huge feature of Halo 3
's massively
successful online multiplayer and Halo infinite's btb it was faced with tremendous decent issues
and matchmaking issues in the UI I crashed well over a hundred times that's not an exaggeration
my shadow play might have made matters worse sure but to the point that I'm being pushed
through dozens and dozens of crashes until I finally just reached a buoying where I had enough
there's a really good way to fix the crashes in a video game like this uh it's not running it as
adminis
trator so basically you [ __ ] you right click it you go to manage and uninstall and then
you hit uninstall in it you don't have to worry about the [ __ ] crashes anymore the constant DS
sees the massively shrinking populations just a few months after launch was already making the
game and not a joinable experience for me there's only like two to three big Team battles Maps
too which made the game get boring and super repetitive quickly well no worries I'll just move
on to custom games lobb
ies and fun matchmaking modes right well with no pre or post-game lobbies
ways to chat with the Enemy and no custom game browser was incredibly hard to find any custom
games to play if any at all and even then there weren't many maps and no Forge yet so not much
to actually play with then with the Casual game modes or game modes invented for casual play
in Halo infinite they still had matchmaking based on CSR and a win rate meaning essentially
skill based matchmaking even for freaking casua
l game modes was still existing making it not only
harder to find matches but also making it feel like you're supposed to be sweating constantly in
the end this is why I quit playing Halo infinite I couldn't find much respite playing the game
sure I enjoyed the competitive moments but I was looking for other areas to rest and recharge and
I could just not find them the game felt like one an attempt at a competitive shooter and sorry I
say attempt because it missed out on so many core compet
itive shooter features even ones that the
previous Halos already had like a map and match inspector complete with kill and heat Maps player
stat tracking worthwhile competitive rewards ways to group in game and so on and so forth Halo 5
Guardians had a better competitive matchmaking and system than Halo infinite and that wasn't a
good sign of things to come remember Halo infinite was supposed to be the Halo that's supposed
to last for a decade onward meanwhile while these problems and issue
s were circulating 343
Studios was doing pseudo Victory tours this has been a pretty common theme throughout though
to be fair 343 Studios celebrates victories that fans are not so much celebrating and then
343 Studios would publicly state that they're going to address the issues while not actually
addressing them what it does and does over and over again is erode the Goodwill players would
have for the company and once that leaves you lose your loyal fan base who keep your game
and franch
ise alive but how was it for these Studios learning anything when they were still
the month of launch introducing monetization that people hated along the same lines that they
had already warned us about previously with a 20 Mr Chief bundle you can get an AI a sticker and a
charm what a deal definitely worth the price of a full game right 343 Studios would finally respond
to complaints with actual changes post launched January 19 2022 slashing the prices on some of
the items in the store th
ese were celebrated but not seen nearly as enough fans were complaining
that the entire system was going to need some reworking including making some skins worthwhile
in the first place even if you can gain them from free or paid ways and then price them accordingly
at the very least 343 Studios seem to be aware of this and in classic 343 Studios fashion addressed
it while not actually addressing it and actually made it worse when fans were complaining about the
store for example you couldn
't actually separate the bundles in it 343 Studios was stating
that their store didn't allow them to do no I've heard excuses uh before but that's
a new one the story you guys made with items that you made to sell at prices that you chose you
can't add things to that store and then sell them individually what sort of nonsense is that and
how is this addressing anything the only actual addressing is basically a single sentence stating
that we were not delivering on value quality or price wit
h no clear plan going forward on how they
were fixed and change that Halo infinite already launched unfinished but launching with mini core
features not properly functioning or being any good like the armor core system and customization
and it's marrying to the battle pass and cash shop was damaging the game and people's perception
of it which is crucial in an online game the population would reflect that as well Halo
infinite would lose around 180 000 active players during this period in J
anuary of 2022 knocking it
off the most played steam charts big Team battles having all of those issues made it unplayable
for me and others but it would finally be fixed two months after launch and even then I was still
facing issues with it but at least I didn't crash three times in the menu anymore whatever fixes
and change of 343 Studios did bring I guess is my point felt half-baked and not well implemented
the majority of the time this reflects on 343 studios's poor planning and testin
g which was
explained to me by a former employee reportedly 343 Studios would decide on mechanics and aspects
without fully testing them out the feedback for these tests and mechanics would then fall on deaf
ears since they wouldn't have time to actually do anything with that feedback and then never have
time to implement or improve it at all according to my source this was in large part due to
Damon Khan who served as a principal lead producer at 343 Studios and a multiplayer and core
gam
eplay director pre-343 Studios Damien Khan had an absolutely tiny resume with a few game credits
Damon had served as an art director on a couple of smaller budget projects or forgotten games before
are working as a producer at Activision Blizzard if you read his LinkedIn or bio you can see that
he's primarily a business focused individual who spent the majority of his time working on the
expensive West Coast the reason that this is valid is because I know how much developers with
experience
in these fields get paid simply due to their resume alone according to my sources Damon
was the Taskmaster enforcing the law of Microsoft alongside Bonnie Ross a company he worked for
before 343 Studios just like she did reportedly he was more so focused on the big Milestones
being completed rather than any polish actually going on Damon still works as a producer at 343
Studios and you have probably never heard of him which makes him the perfect arm of Microsoft to
enforce things there see
med to be a whole lot of leadership involved at 343 Studios but more
on the boss tradition than the sort of leader that you imagine do what I say but I have no
accountability for your mess-ups type of feeling the multiplayer lead designer Andrew wits would
leave Halo infinite now Andrew is an interesting case he might have worked on quite a few failed
projects but their projects remembered often times for their gameplay such as lawbreakers and
now even Halo infinite it's talented that can't
be debated and him leaving the company to me
either speaks to his inability to improve what was there or seeing a future in which he and the
company can't so he pivoted to things before it was too late the problem with Andrew wits is
that he has no prior Halo experience I don't even know what Halos he's played or he's liked he
had Zach Boyce of Halo 5 do Aid in his work sure but still I find this a tricky thing I've met many
developers who don't even play their own games or play them signi
ficantly and I am of the personal
belief that to be a gameplay leader or director you have to not only play the game you have
to understand it gameplay wise at quite a high level I have questions about how much Halo Andrew
Riven played in his team to be very blunt because the physics and Halo infinite are something that I
haven't even really mentioned yet but it stops the game from ever really truly feeling like Halo and
it's bizarre that a game director at the level of Andrew's Talent woul
d make a mistake like that
except if he didn't play much Halo now let me elaborate when I play MCC I can do crazy things in
the game's beautiful physics engine that make me feel connected to the game in my character her and
my actions Halo infinite has an issue with being floaty as all hell with physics not making any
sense aliens are not Vehicles slip and slide like go-karts on Grease impacts have no weight to them
and the momentum of the game feels just literally fake like it's not actual
ly based on a physics
engine and you're not riding in a warthog you're actually writing in a model view of a warthog
the feel of Halo infinite is just all wrong and it contributes to people's burnout of the game I
think and just lack of getting stuck into it think about that for a second Halo 2 and 3's physics
took ages for us to perfect in Halo infinite there's not even a whole lot of physics to master
and very little special mechanics included and whenever the game did have bxb and differ
ent
mechanics that were in the game like different super jumps 343 Studios kept patching them out I
think being able to sprint in mantle also hurts this even more including the maps themselves
lacking that Halo feel as you can just avoid mini spots and traps while not having to learn
how to master physics or jump or move properly instead of having to know how to properly Crouch
jump at a certain angle you can just mantle your way up people speak very highly of the gameplay in
Halo infinite
and I think that it's good just in terms of a generic shooter but not for a Halo game
and it doesn't in my opinion feel like Halo so the gameplay team on Halo infinite did a fantastic job
they just didn't make a Halo game by February 2022 things were so bad that even Forbes were reporting
on how bad Halo infinite was doing only a few mere months after launch in the context of Halo this
was a catastrophic failure had 343 Studios fumbled one of their most successful launches ever no
one of t
he most successful Halo launches ever Halo infinite would lose even more players
the following month of April 2022. meanwhile 343 Studios was yet again on a victory tour
talking about their Global aspirations for the Halo franchise when asked how they would go
about selecting the right content to add to the ever-expanding Halo Universe the director of
development Frank O'Connor would state that it's kind of like porn you know it when you see
it which is just bizarre and doesn't even make an
y sense meanwhile the Halo TV series existed
and was stuck in development hell just launched at the time and was the laughing stock of the
internet which seemed to go heavily against the notion that Frank just mentioned I mean in fact
Frank in 343 Studios hadn't seemed to be right about what to add to the Halo Universe multiple
times they even partially sort of would admit that remember I have to admit detective or not
Frank just rubs me the wrong way it seems like he's the definition of a
corporate cheerleader
and I have never really seen anything of value that he's actually added or contributed
including even just his public appearances like this one I'm not singling him out either
this is a director of 343 Studios someone that you would expect to be helpful and to be a
leader certain Affinity would jump into the picture sometime in April of 2022 however
I don't believe they had any significant involvement on Halo infinite himself instead
reportedly CA had been involved in
working on a Untitled and unnamed Halo project that many
had suspected to be a Halo BR apparently over a hundred developers were working on whatever
project this was perhaps CA was helping 343 studios in Microsoft pivot Halo infinite or maybe
this was just some unique Halo spin-off title a few months after 343 Studios apparently fixed
the cash shop fans were still hating the cash shop including for checks notes reasons of increasing
the prices who would have thought that after launch that
increasing the prices would piss the
fan base off while everyone hints my sarcasm three for three Studios and Microsoft's tone deafness
was killing Halo infinite and the Halo franchise as a whole you might think that that's harsh for
me to say but 343 Studios tried to put the same cash shop in Halo MCC but was universally [ __ ]
on online and then rejected doing it so meaning that they would actually try to do it again
despite literally not having success doing it in Halo infinite now I men
tioned that I had tons
of desync and disconnect issues while playing Halo infinite even just recently while recording
footage but I didn't talk about some of the other horrible technical issues let's start with the
fact that Halo infinite was causing players to use up to a gigabyte of data per game and then
the decink issues that I mentioned weren't even going away and they never did in fact there's
entire DC compilations about Halo infinite here's the beautiful glitches ranging from Game
ending to visual ones that happen at the very beginning of a match if you could even get Halo
infinite to function properly it wasn't half bad but that was a serious if my September 2022 while
some content updates had come to the game Halo infinite was in desperate need of new maps of
all kinds Forge and a custom map playlist could alleviate some of these issues but with Forge
still not in by August of 2022 it was a serious issue one that would finally start to come to a
head when Forge Mod
e was announced and launched in September of 2022. this was great news and
everyone was excited well whoever was left at this point and the contingent who would return
with the forge mode as well but with the Positive news came horrible news as well it would turn out
the 343 Studios would be canceling the couch Co-op altogether Not only was this a critical blow for
Halo fans as it was promised by 343 Studios pre and post launch again reports would come out that
this was reportedly known for
months yet again so Not only was 343 Studios not performing up to
standards they were aware of it and trying to mitigate as much as possible versus owning up to
it and being honest about it this is why Western companies cannot do magical final Fantasy 14
rebirth guys according to Brad Sams Microsoft was viewing Halo infinite as a financial
failure which is the harshest failure for a corporation to admit Sams would state that the
delay of season 3 was the final straw that broke the camel's
back that resulted in the management
reshuffle oh yeah management reshuffling happened this restructure would be reported as the reason
for none other than the head of 343 Studios to step down and be moved somewhere else within
Microsoft yep that's right Bonnie Ross would step down in September of 2022 and her role would
be divided amongst Pierre hintzy who would now be the head of the studio Brian Koski the general
manager and Elizabeth Van wyk on the business side of things to put this in
to perspective
Bonnie must have had an either absurd salary or an absurd scale of work and control neither
were very healthy for the company clearly Bonnie wouldn't be the only one to leave however design
lead Jerry hook would also depart as what art director Nicholas beauvier Jerry was behind Halo
4 and 5 and a long time Xbox developer while he had an impressive resume including working
on the original Xbox Live there's nothing to say that his work on H4 H5 or Halo infinite was
quality ar
e what the game needed in fact Jerry Hook is supposedly the guy behind the god-awful
progression system in Halo infinite itself as well as its connections to the monetization system as
for Nicholas over here art is a team-based thing but leaders are able to tell their team Direction
and so on and so forth I don't hear it talked about enough but I've already got the Hornet's
Nest going crazy in this video but I think Halo infinite has quite possibly the worst art in all
of the Halo franchise
entire maps are grayscaled and boring with very little colors and set pieces
even the armor sets themselves and Designs don't make logical sense and don't reflect Halo very
well sure the enemy design is actually pretty good but I think that that's kind of where it ends
art is super important for the Halo franchise even in the smallest sorts of things because they can
help build immersion in the story as a whole the art in Halo infinite is utterly forgettable
and won't be remembered in the
overall Legacy of Halo art don't even get me started on
the sound and cinematic soundscape which is Iconic in the Halo franchise with songs that
you can sing in your head right now or out loud right Mario Donald struck gold with the Halo
franchise but was nowhere to be seen with Halo infinite because he was having legal issues with
the damn company I mean just pay the guy right pay the guy and give him the rights to his stuff
the soundtrack was forgettable in Halo infinite much like its art
which was a cardinal sin for a
Halo project because it's one thing to create a cinematic soundtrack for an epic universe but a
pre-existing one means that it has a particular theme or sound expectation already and that was
nowhere to be found in Halo infinite people might not think of Halo as an artistic Focus game but
really think about Halo 1 2 and 3 in reach these are all about the r in the presentation
meanwhile behind the scenes still certain Affinity was working on a secret Halo proj
ect
at least that's what was said apparently there were also rumors that the project was canceled
because nearing the end of 2022 on Steam Halo infinite was already at barely above 6000 players
Peak so whatever certain Affinity was working on help was going to be needed to save this Halo
project or even just Halo period much needed matchmaking improvements would come November 2022.
these would be in the way of allowing players to choose which regions they would queue in such
as their local
region only this would decrease the chances of poorly matched games but increase
the chances of queue times other changes would include the shift from an individual system to a
team one my guess is that they did this because Halo is inherently a team-based game and doing
it individually was causing problems on how the matchmaking was working in the first place the
problem is that it still penalizes solo players too heavily which halo has nearly always had
a problem with even Halo MCC suffe
rs from this issue where team cues are not separates you could
theoretically get matched up against a whole team or three players so the matchmaking fixes didn't
really fix matchmaking they were a lot more like Band-Aid fixes really another example of uber
3 Studios tradition of doing something good and then kind of having something immediately
bad happen after would be on full display with the next season of Halo infinite when 343 Studios
would have to pull a map immediately after adding i
t it's like any time you wanted to celebrate
moves that there through Studios would make it always felt like celebrating too soon Matt
booty a Microsoft executive to end the year of 2022 which state that Halo infinite would fall
short on post-launch content and when you have Microsoft Executives speaking publicly it's not a
good sign the next month Kiki wolfkill a boss of Halo trans media meaning it crosses into other
avenues such as TV and more would depart the company now to be honest I d
on't have that much to
say about Kiki including from any of my sources I don't really know what her job was exactly or
her direct contributions to Halo but I know that she worked at 343 Studios for over 10 years
and was deeply involved in the story narrative and art it seems that her role was more of a
producer though perhaps only contributing more to the leadership bloat at 343 Studios with not
a lot to show for it there might have been a lot of leaders of the release Studios but there was
no actual leadership one of the sources told me that a large problem at favorite Studios was that
nobody wanted to put their foot down creatively and make a decision for people to follow their
voice race this sounds like something that Kiki should have done or had experience in doing but
with little game development experience and actual gaming experience for all intents and purposes
of what I know past a point a producer can only offer so much business experience and solutions
and they'r
e all from the perspective of business in the case of Kiki she was an artist originally
but the majority of her credits are in producing and Kiki wouldn't be the only one to leave in
January either all of Xbox would be hit with massive layoffs Microsoft would cut as many as
10 000 jobs and according to Jason schreier three for three Studios was hit hard by the layoffs the
studio head was stating that yes indeed they were in a process of restructuring everything Pierre
was also reassuring fa
ns that Halo wasn't going anywhere and not going anywhere at 343 Studios
this felt quite conflicting and confusing according to many reports for the time of the
Halo franchise being handed off to someone else but it certainly wasn't business as usual Halo's
failure had affected Microsoft's bottom line contributing to a 13 decline in Gaming revenue
overall this was very likely the cause of the restructuring and culling following the news
influencer Tim the tatman was calling Halo one of the
biggest flops of the decade oh brother
man you want to talk about the flop of the decade it's Halo 343 Studios might have denied many
of the rumors that were coming out but they absolutely had shrunk even more in size due to
layoffs and the rumors of pivoting their engine were reportedly true slipspace would be shifting
to the unreal 5 engine or more accurately they would be porting whatever Halo projects were
being worked on in the general engine itself and properties to the Unreal Engine
5. a process
that would take many months and maybe even years some people were afraid of the changes for that
reason choosing to have 353 continued to work in slip space flawed or not would mean that there
would be more content for Halo infinite right but Unreal Engine 5 would allow 343 Studios to hire
way more Talent and teach Talent way easier so in the end I think it was the right decision for
the Halo franchise going forward but unfortunately it's spelled the end for Halo infinite in mi
ni
indirect and direct ways the next month through Studios would announce icing the story content all
together for Halo infinite confirming my previous point this was not as bad as OverWatch 2 canceling
their entire PVE mode but it was very much on par the future of Halo and Halo infinite by February
2023 was in flux and unsure what the population still quite low in the 6000s on Steam according to
Halo API only 15 000 players were seen playing on Xbox based on a pool of 221 000 players thou
gh
what constitutes a player in this case is not really explained so before people try to say well
you're not considering the Xbox population well that those numbers actually come from the Xbox
population numbers and before people then start to defend those numbers for a Halo franchise these
are horrible something we have kept quiet about for the majority of this video though has been
competitive Halo what is competitive Halo well competitive Halo was before any of these other
major Esport
s especially Shooters on consoles during the early 2000s Halo was the biggest
competitive game before Esports was even a term MLG or Major League Gaming was built on the
back of Halo in its massive popularity the thing is is that Halo wasn't ever really built as a
competitive shooter those didn't even really exist at the time remember all three of the first
Halos have serious and Well Done campaigns and also a plethora of casual non-competitive modes
to choose from the fact that competitive
Halo worked was more of a result of the popularity
of the franchise mixed with the human desire to take things to the ultimate level it was organic
and Grassroots it's why I love the competitive scene so much in Halo it was just really raw and
reminded me of the fighting game Community but it wasn't made as a competitive shooter that then
tried to appeal to a broader audience which is exactly the problem in Halo infinite inarguably as
a Halo title has the worst community and Community feat
ures by far this I think is an no part not
just because of the other issues that we've covered but also because super food Studios lacks
the knowledge and understanding of what makes Halo Halo and was compensating this by enlisting in
the help of professional players these Pro players played on an internal team in their feedback and
playing Styles formulated what became of Halo infinite to an extent I am however going to wager
based on me knowing a few of them slightly that this team was mo
re so focused on the recent Halos
and competitive play and balancing that's not a formula that works for Halo though and it never
has if you build Halo competitive players and mine first you will alienate the entire Halo fan
base because competitive players make up just a fraction of it and the HDs isn't really even that
bad I'm not trying to throw shade especially with not the most resources the Halo Championship
viewership numbers are actually not that bad they're positively trending the
problem is is that
Halo infinite is failing as a broad reaching game overall which means no matter what the competitive
scene will always suffer you see the problem if a game fails to capture a casual audience in the end
the competitive scene is never going to amount to much so in reality it's far more important for
your game to be good for the the majority of players then appeal to the competitive ones with
their right options and modes the sandbox and Halo infinite isn't horrible but it h
as a severe lack
of silly and fun and although 343 Studios took effort to create these new weapons the majority
of them are useless because the game is balanced for competition it's a serious problem that
makes the majority of the guns just feel useless Frank O'Connor would depart through for three
Studios April 2023 and while Frank doesn't get much heat from the general fan base I do think he
was deserving of some of the blame of steering the Halo franchise astray including Halo infinite h
e
Not only was involved in all of them he was in a director position for all of them while Frank's
passion for Halo can't be denied I do certainly question his actual talent and contributions
I think there's always this problem with very opinionated developers without actual development
experience tinkering with the Halo formula from an outside perspective or any formula from an outside
perspective but if you guys think I'm just being too harsh then at the end of the day I bring you
guys b
ack to a point that I always make with devs and their impact in general which contributions
do you think that you specifically remember Frank introducing for me many of them were not very
good ones so his legacy is conflicting for me Halo by March of 2023 would shift to a full-on CSR
system apparently before it was actually using MMR but it was confusing and it made me wonder
how transparent was 343 actually being with the changes to the CSR system now players would
have greater variability
in ranked matchmaking but not lose as many points this is very obviously
a decision made because of a low population this would also incentivize grinding making it easy
for any dedicated player to eventually grind to the highest rank Onyx for example this made
ranked further worthless to strive for since rewards were already lacking but there's also
a lack of a tournament system in game a Lobby custom browser and all of this together kills
chances for an organic competitive scene to grow o
utside of matchmaking whether these changes
were brought in simply because the game was dying in population like I mentioned or they simply
just didn't understand what makes a game or a rank system in a game competitive and compelling
either of these would be quite bad while the rank system was suffering in Halo infinite the forge
being introduced finally in the march of 2023 would pass one million Community Creations this
would help the population double for a short time before dropping ri
ght back down sadly my detective
intuition tells me that the poor Forge creation download and share system was probably a huge
culprit there because the Creations in the actual Fort system are amazing this is easily the best
Fort system the game's ever seen with poor UI and a hard download and share system it makes it hard
to find and share other mods throw in a lack of a custom browser and suddenly you can't even play
any of the custom games you're trying to play without enough of your fri
ends on period even if
things had just slowed down for a month or two after its release forage and its implementation
was quite possibly the biggest victory for the community in Halo infinite post launch wise
Michael's score was able to do something truly amazing with the forge system in Halo infinite
from a position of deficit problems and all Michael and his team were able to create quite
possibly the greatest Forge system that the Halo franchise has ever seen great greatly exciting
Halo
fans for what is possible with custom tools in the universe Forge was enough to move the
population slightly but not in a sustainable enough way to keep the game alive or resurrect it
according to the live service head Sean Baron 343 Studios was aware that improvements in Cadence of
content were going to be needed going forward but pointing that out in itself isn't actually helpful
you have to actually scale up your Workforce and optimize your systems to actually see any benefits
otherwise
like many things it seems at 343 Studios this is just wishful thinking put in public
for positive press because the season that Sean was trying to Hype up in the same article
was introducing bits of content that players had been asking for since the game came out like the
infection mode that while a great addition to the game added in the summer of 2023 to Halo infinite
felt literally two years too late it was even leaked that long ago which made it launching when
it did already feel like
the excitement had gone oh yeah and career rank would also finally make
an appearance after three different Halos and two post year launches and two years post launch
in the case of Halo infinite well news flash Halo players never wanted career rank to leave
in the first place the same applies to Cod fans with Prestige ranks being removed from the Cod
games these are core aspects that fans love of these games and the only argument for removing
them is monetization based so you would think t
hat I and many others should be celebrating
its final inclusion right but I can't because not only does it not really even have a real rank
system a real career rank system not the one that we were familiar with that was very fleshed out
and worked properly in Halo 3 but a player has already hit the max rank in Halo infinite and
all he got was an emblem and aimplate ouch talk about all the air just leaving a balloon at one
time I came back to test the career Rank and new changes and I could
n't shake the same feeling I
had since playing Halo infinite launch the game just barely feels like Halo let alone looks like
Halo and I can't force myself it is anymore I got two disconnects during my four games with at least
five on-screen visual bugs like my character body flying and a slew of other decent issues that were
there since the game came out I wanted my return to be triumphant I wanted to be able to celebrate
something of Halo infinite but the truth is when I play Halo infinit
e I feel more like I'm playing
the loneliest competitive shooter there is nothing about the game screams Community to me to put this
into perspective look at these screenshots of Halo 3 and Halo 2's matchmaking and how live it felt
especially if you were there nothing feels cozy about Halo infinite not even the gray color scheme
while I can find some fun moments when playing in the sandbox online I find that they are so few
and far in between I'm better off playing the Master Chief collecti
on in fact I was recording
footage in both in the amount of crazy Clips I could find in MCC compared to Halo infinite that
I've been showing throughout this segment that have probably made a few people giggle or chuckle
we're just too numerous to count meanwhile many of my infinite games were just devoid of any
immersion moments like at especially socially you can try to watch even the best clip makers in
infinite like mint Blitz and still see the glaring issues of the game in comparison to
its stable
mates so even when it's being performed at the highest levels for fun and excitement it still
just seems lackluster compared to other halos foreign oh man this has been a monster case detectives
I can't downplay how much work and effort has been put into this video and story from
Tom and I but Halo is a personal case for me and one that I wanted to use any one of my
influences to try and Chronicle an in a attempt to not just tell the story but hopefully
affect positive change g
oing forward we have progressed through the timeline and then
some and I believe we have more than enough Clues and pieces of evidence to put this
case to bed while I don't Revel in seeing my favorite shooter franchise falter I do feel
I am just the person to try to tell its story the music starts playing detectives gather
around as Ennis shoots his Dart into a vessel of his choice okay wait we're wrong anime but
all of that means it's final deduction time let's list the largest contributin
g factors for the
failure of Halo infinite if you weren't paying attention you know performance and decent issues
crashes and bugs Galore a cattle driver's Rodeo poor work environment and direction
lack of content and long content Cycles lack of community features
lackluster art and sound poor physics and no player Collision promises
that were just not delivered on if this video felt personal it was Halo is my favorite shooter
franchise and it will always be that being said what frustrates
me more about the story is not
just because I like Halo but because it represents aspects of the tech industry and corporations
that I just attest in general and have experienced personally and that's treating the video game
industry just like the tech industry tons of people in leadership positions not even willing to
risk themselves or anything and even when they do mess up they can fall right on their feet and get
hired in the same region again for a high premium because the game indust
ry no matter how massive
is still pretty young many of these top companies hire based on your resume and accolades more so
than your specific Talent OR contributions this leads to hiring and rehiring the same people
for high amounts of money who don't perform as needed or might not even necessarily be the best
fit especially when these same companies think that taking a mobile gaming guy to work on a major
shooting franchise would work because well he has experience in game development so t
he theme for
me really is in the end if you entrust a company with dozens of developers give them the LeBron
James of Shooters and they they make nothing but excuses and not take accountability for their
failures they are not only going to continue to do the same and they did over the course of three
Halos to be exact it's like Miami before they won the championship getting all the best players
or whatever other sports references that come to mind for you but excusing 343 Studios and
apolo
gizing on their behalf is just perplexing even if you like Halo they had every opportunity
to do something big and successful or just hand the franchise off and they fumbled at every turn
if you like Halo and have some self-respect you honestly shouldn't really like 343 Studios and
their handling of the franchise they've done nothing to earn your loyalty and Trust especially
recently and that's unfortunate because there's some quality within their three Halo titles
regardless but at least w
e still have the MCC which offers endless fun Halo experiences for such
an affordable price thanks for watching Detectives
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